The Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.)

APRIL 24–29, 1917

Rejoinder to N. S. Angarsky

      During the Debate on the Agrarian Question

      April 28 (May 11)

Comrades,it seems to me that Comrade Angarsky is indulging in
      several contradictions. I speak about the material foundation of
      the urge towards nationalisation. The peasants have no idea of
      nationalisation. I say that the conditions of an all-Russia and
      international market exist, and this is expressed in the high
      prices of grain. Every peasant sees, knows, and feels the
      fluctuations of these prices, and farming has to conform to
      these conditions, to these prices. I say that the old
      landownership and the new farming system have absolutely
      diverged and this divergence explains why the peasants are
      pressing onward. The peasant is a proprietor, Comrade Angarsky
      says. Quite right. Stolypin wanted to use this as a basis for
      changing agrarian relations, he tried his hardest, but he
      failed, because such changes cannot be brought about without a
      revolutionary break-up. This, then, is the material foundation
      of the peasants’ urge towards the nationalisation of the land,
      although they are completely ignorant as to the real meaning of
      nationalisation. The peasant proprietor is instinctively
      inclined to maintain that the land is God’s, because it has
      become impossible to live under the old conditions of
      landownership. What Comrade Angarsky is proposing is a sheer
      misunderstanding.Thesecond paragraph says that peasant landownership is fettered
      all round, from top to bottom, by old semi-feudal ties and
      relationships. But does it say anything about the landed
      estates? It does not. Comrade Angarsky’s amendment is based on a
      misapprehension. He has ascribed to me things I never said,things the peasants have no idea about. The peasants know the
      world situation by the prices of grain and consumer goods, and
      if a railway runs through his village, the peasant feels its
      effect through his own farm. To live the old way is
      impossible—that’s what the peasant feels, and he expresses
      this feeling in a radical demand for the abolition of the old
      system of landownership. The peasant wants to be a proprietor,
      but he wants to be one on reallocated land; he wants to farm
      land the ownership of which is conditioned by his present
      requirements, and not by those which were prescribed for him by
      officials. The peasant knows this perfectly well, but expresses
      it differently, of course, and it is this that forms the
      material foundation of his urge towards the nationalisation of
      the land.